Discussion
Apple: enough is enough
davidcollantes: > "Suffice it to say, I have ordered a Linx PC, which will replace the Mac."That was a sentence uttered with the misplaced confidence of a man who had no idea his real troubles were only just beginning.
tonymet: Consent Prompt Fatigue and overload is a serious problem. To perform the most basic task across my iPhone + watch I need to suffer half a dozen consent & pin prompts. Often at the most sensitive and difficult times: it's raining, I have gloves, I'm juggling a power tool or something dangerous. My devices continue pin prompt me every 30 seconds like I'm holding the Nuclear football.We used to respect that credential/prompt fatigue resulted in worse security, then the lawyers got their way, engineers / product managers conceded, and now users are punished with useless prompting every 10 seconds.The only way forward will be for some a-hole product managers to push back on this nonsense.
manoDev: We’re past the golden age of personal computing, the money isn’t there anymore. I’m afraid we’ll have to get used to bad software for a while.
ezst: Or, you know, use software developed by humans, for human consumption, aka community software, the stuff you generally associate with open source!
hex4def6: The author explicitly shows how in Apple's walled garden, even that had hurdles that have been put up, 'for security'.
dotdi: Several ideas from this blog post are factually wrong.Additionally, I cannot confirm the more subjective ideas - and I've been running Macbooks for almost 20 years, and specifically working with Python both for hobby, for research, professionally, for cybersecurity, etc.I have an old 2013 laptop that is the "couch machine". It still works adequately. No issues with sleep/wake. Time machine outlasted the external HDD it was running on. I am writing this on an M1 Max, which will be 5 years old this year, and I hope I get 5 more years, it's just that good.
uniqueuid: It's interesting how the sentiment around Apple has turned, for the first time in what feels like 20 years.The true reason is, as the recent norwegian report quipped: We love our tech, but it betrays us - that's an abusive relationship.Consent prompts are a band-aid for users being exploited: They are not fixing the root but covering it with legal painkillers.But the only true remedy is actually feeling in control of and empowered by your device - a vision that Apple once at least promised, but now has less and less legitimacy of heralding.
taurath: > feeling in control of and empowered by your device - a vision that Apple once at least promisedLegitimately, when? I got started on an Apple II, I used the puck mouse without right click, I watched people buy the insanely costly hardware that was always integrated and you couldn’t service yourself. Windows was always more open than Mac - people just didn’t use Linux because it required you to know how things worked under the hood.Just like the rest of large technology companies, and the economy as a whole, we are all being squeezed for every drop. Eventually the well will run dry, there’s already practically no more data to pull, and the apps will get shittier as revenues need to keep going up, and all the pillars of tech will fall over like a tree hollowed out by pests.
retired: > people just didn’t use Linux because it required you to know how things worked under the hood.This is how Windows feels to me now. The very first interaction with Windows when I buy a new computer is to do Shift+F10 and type away some magical terminal commands to get it working.That I have to use the terminal to get Windows operational after unboxing my new device is insanity.From my notes:> net.exe user 'username' 'password' /add> net.exe localgroup Administrators 'username' /add> cd oobe> msoobe.exe && shutdown.exe -r